


A Call That Angers, A Moment That Exposes

by Austennerdita2533



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: A little bit of fluff, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And feels; definite feels, Canon until 4x18, F/M, Humor, Omg why am I so atrocious at tagging?, Sort of? - Freeform, There is a Klaroline 'moment' anyway, deviates from there, kind of?, maybe? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: Klaus knows Caroline has a prom to plan, that she's more or less threatened him not to bother her again after she helped "bring him back" from Silas's mind intrusion, but he's confused by the influx of text messages she's shooting his way. And all those angry tomato faces, too. He's not scouring the earth for Tyler, he's not siring or slaying hybrids, he hasn't bothered her friends or tried to contact her at all...yet she's upset with him for some new reason. And he has no idea why.What's changed since "friends, then?"





	A Call That Angers, A Moment That Exposes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laufire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laufire/gifts).



> I did my best to steer clear of the characters and things you don't care for, my lovely giftee, and I felt the best way to do that was to keep this more or less Klaroline-centric. It's mostly back-and-forth banter over a misunderstanding with a dash of feels. 
> 
> Anyway, I'm always nervous about writing gifts for people so *fingers crossed* you enjoy it. xx
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own TVD or its characters, but I have fun borrowing them from time-to-time.

“Listen, love, I know you warned me not to call you after our little Silas incident,” Klaus drawled when he heard her answer the phone with an irritated click-and-huff, “but I feel I require an explanation for the onslaught of angry tomato faces you texted me a short while ago. Is the quantity meant as mere hyperbole or have I somehow managed to offend you ten separate ways without my knowledge or consent this fine Virginia afternoon?”

“Those weren’t tomatoes, genius. They were scowling emojis,” Caroline said, correcting him.

“Tom- _eh_ -toe, tom- _aw_ -toe…”

“Oh, for crying out loud! Can you _not_ be impossible for two minutes, please,” she snapped, “or is that too much to ask of you?”

“Perhaps if you tried asking me nicely.”

“I don’t know why I bother asking you anything. Let alone talking to you at all,” she mumbled through clenched teeth. “Ever.”

“Just for the record, sweetheart,” Klaus interjected with a soft chuckle, paying no heed to her grumbling commentary because her revulsion was oddly endearing not to mention futile, “I believe one scowling text would have been sufficient enough for me to denote your obvious but unfounded anger.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding. You’re kidding, right?” Her tone was half accusation, half roll-her-eyes-because-she’s-not-surprised-by-this groan. 

“No…” he trailed off, “no, can’t say that I am.”

“You’re unreal. Abso- _lutely_ unreal!”

“I assure you I’m quite in earnest, Caroline.”

“Ha!”

“Post-stake-stabbing and bleach, I thought we left things okay? And, dare I say, more or less…” Klaus paused for effect, “friend-ish?” 

He gripped the phone tighter to his ear. “What’s happened here?” he asked, unable to prevent that note of panic and concern from creeping into his throat, but desperate to swallow it down before she heard anything untoward.

“Un-freaking-believable,” she muttered under her breath, and scoffed for extra measure.

Klaus could picture her standing there—in her light and airy bedroom, before the fireplace at the Salvatore boarding house, in front of her alphabetized locker at Mystic Falls High, leaning against the pool table at the Grill, clutching her ‘ _x_ ’-marked clipboard at a prom committee meeting (or wherever the bloody hell she was)—with her hands on her hips and one foot tapping with impatient energy as she readied to scold him in that perky, but razor-sharp-and-smiling, way of hers that meant business.

“I mean, why should I expect you to be anything but infuriating and goading as hell? It’s always the same with you no matter what, isn’t it? You push, push, push. You don’t stop,” she continued in a shrill voice, “you never stop!”

“Let’s skip past all the unpleasantries and blame, shall we? Just tell me what atrocity I’ve ‘supposedly’ committed,” Klaus air-quoted, scraping his fingers down his weary face and plopping himself into a leather armchair in his bedroom with a sigh, “so I can work out how to acquit myself.”

“Oh, please! Don’t pretend like you don’t know exactly why I’m pissed.”

“Who’s pretending, sweetheart?”

“Ugh! I swear I’d stab you with that white oak stake right now if I could,” she replied tartly. Caroline would probably throw her head back here, fists balled, then narrow her eyes at him until the hostility she directed toward him became palpable and blanketed him in the kind of hurt and disappointment he’d prefer to ignore. Then he’d lie to himself so he could believe those emotions never surfaced, that they were never there. “This isn’t funny Klaus!”

“Again,” he said as his voice unraveled into something more pointed and humorless, “who’s laughing?”

She relented a little bit here, but not enough to erase all remaining traces of annoyance, frustration, and disgust from her words. 

“Just tell me how to fix it, okay? Or at least tell me which one of your minions you deployed to snatch then tamper with it, so I can bully him or her into correcting this nonsense. I suggest you do it soon, too, before I stage a coup and convince Silas to come after you again enacting my revenge.”

“Fix what?”

Caroline released an exasperated sound akin to a ‘ _why didn’t I kill you when I had the chance?_ ’ “Stop acting clueless!” she demanded, her foot stomping in the background.

“I’m not.”

“You are, too! This isn’t a damn game, okay? It’s my life.”

“And this is _my_ bloody time you’re wasting!” Klaus cut in as his patience fractured, jaw ticking.

“Stop screwing with me, then!” she shot back, more pleading than irate.

“I assure you I’m doing no such thing. But I am growing exceedingly tired of these riddles, Caroline.” Klaus’ knuckles whitened and dug into his knees as he leaned forward and half-growled into the phone. “So either tell me what on God’s earth prompted your emoji frenzy and sour as lemon attitude, or I promise I’ll hang up and tear into the next innocent human throat I see, leaving _you_ to pick up the detached limbs all over Mystic Falls—alone.”

“Are you seriously going to sit there on your proverbial iron throne and act like you never stole—never hacked into my damn phone!?” she asked, incredulous. 

“Call me old-fashioned or ill-informed, love, but I was of the opinion that friends didn’t take or break into each other’s belongings without permission?”

She laughed bitterly, disbelief rolling off her tongue like blades of ice, “Yeah, sure. And since when do you, of all people, follow rules of protocol?”

“I don’t,” Klaus answered. Caroline hummed triumphantly. “That is…” he licked his lips, rubbing them together uncomfortably, “That is until I met you,” he added in a low timbre. 

“Oh, really? So what does that make me, then,” she clucked spitefully, “your almighty _exception_?”

“Stranger things have happened, so who knows? You could be, love. You could be.”

“Wait…what!?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, “Nothing,” he murmured.

“Did you just—”

“Nothing!” he barked as panic scuttled up his spine like spiderlegs. “I said nothing, damn you!”

Klaus regretted the admission the moment it left his mouth, the words sliding across his teeth and slipping out between his lips in a soft, artless way that betrayed too much meaning and speared their banter into silence, becoming a vulnerability he hadn’t intended to share with himself not to mention speak out loud. To _her_. 

It was amazing and appalling, the things Caroline stirred inside of him. Mercy, pity, forgiveness, hope, tenderness: all of those human sensibilities she pulled out of his dusty, darkened recesses like entrails without trying—one-by-one—to make him almost grateful for the taste of blood they left behind whenever she was done; finished for the day, perhaps, but not ready to give up on him. _Not quite, not yet_.

Something unsettling always seemed to sink beneath his skin in her presence, behind her scrutiny, because of her influence and how she challenged him at every blasted turn whether she stood before him or berated him over the phone about a slew of ‘ _the Allure is calling for you, so come and surrender_ ’ notifications; and he often felt himself bending in places he swore he would never budge again let alone would threaten to break open anew. He found himself willing to sacrifice certain things he wanted merely to make her smile. He found himself hoping to provide her with the happiness she desired. 

Truth be told, for the first time in centuries, he found that, for Caroline, he at least wanted to _try_.

__

After a few more seconds of wordless awkwardness, therefore, particularly since there’d been no resolution between them over this whole phone rubbish, Klaus suggested they meet somewhere neutral and out-of-the-way (some place crowded, if she preferred) to debunk this whole mystery over a cup of coffee.

_It could be our new “c”_ _thing,_ he was tempted to say but didn’t. _Like champagne_. 

Caroline hesitated at the proposition for what seemed like a decade. Then, after sighing as if she’d exhausted all other appealing avoid-the-hybrid options, she resolved to meet him at _Wake Up Café_ on the outskirts of town within half an hour. Making sure to warn him beforehand, of course, that if this whole thing turned out to be some twisted, contrived game he’d concocted in order to trick her into spending time alone with him, she’d make him regret it. Sorely and completely. (As if he was somehow fool enough not to know that already.)

She wasted no time once she arrived at the coffee shop, either. She never did. 

Caroline preferred to bite right into the meat of things, bypassing all the fat and fluff to chew on the truth of things with him, which is something he not only respected but admired. She was determined—to the point of tenacity, frankly—to sniff Klaus out for lies or suspicious behavior while she unloaded on him the barrage of “Allure” messages and notifications she’d received over the last day-and-a-half. The ones, as she’d soon come to understand, had been forged and delivered by a hand that wasn’t his.

“It doesn’t make sense, okay?” Caroline said, her fingers tearing through blonde tendrils. “Who else would go to such ridiculous lengths to convince me to acknowledge a so-called _attraction to darkness_ , if not for you?”

Klaus shrugged. “It could be one of those asinine teenage pranks?”

“None of my friends are that cruel. Or stupid,” she added in afterthought.

Klaus averted his gaze. He traced the rim of his coffee mug with his index finger as the corners of his mouth twitched, “Are you sure you about that, sweetheart?”

“Yes!”

“Of course,” he nodded, unconvinced. “Whatever you say.”

She glared at him here, but it lacked substance and dwindled into uncertain obscurity in seconds, creasing her forehead like a question mark and giving way to the amused chuckle he hadn’t realized he’d been trying to stifle.

“Don’t be an ass,” Caroline pointed in warning, fighting back a smile. 

“According to you,” he clasped his hands together and leaned his elbows on the table’s edge, “I can’t help myself. It’s apparently one of my most prominent and more inherent qualities,” Klaus said.

She frowned. “That’s not true.”

“No?”

“No,” she answered with a shake of her head. Sighing, her blonde waves spilled over her shoulders as she peered up at him with a flicker of something soft in her gaze he didn’t recognize, “Believe it or not, you can be okay sometimes.”

“Really now? How fascinating.” Klaus scooted upright, adjusting his posture so as to show her his attentiveness, “Tell me more.”

“There’s no need for you to grow a bigger head than you already have or anything,” Caroline rolled her eyes. “I only meant that—just—you’re not totally—” she fidgeted, pausing to collect herself, “I mean, your company isn’t always so—”

He inched forward and let his palm slide flat across the tabletop. “Yes?” 

“Whatever. Never mind.” 

She bit her bottom lip; waved him away with a blush.

“Don’t worry, love,” Klaus intoned, warmth buoying in his chest because their fingers were only millimeters from touching, “I aim to improve upon that _sometimes._ And I will, you know _…_ straight away.”

Caroline arched an eyebrow but didn’t move or retract her hand as she shifted closer to smirk and whisper, “You’re exhausting, you know that?”

“I do, yes.” Considering her with a tilt of his head and a smug look, he added, “But I think perhaps you enjoy that about me? I’d venture a step further to say I believe you like the enigma I am because it’s unsettling and more than a little provoking to you that I’m shadowed and full of sharp edges and layers. I think…why, I think I intrigue you.” 

He paused to run his thumb across her bedrock of knuckles, careful not to look up for fear of exposing too much or too little. Then, with a scratch of his chin, he added, “Occasionally, anyway.”

“You infuriate me, too, though,” she said a little too forcibly, the reply coming out louder than she’d intended.

Klaus grinned.

The rest of the café evaporated. No more screeching chairs, no more _dings_ from the cash register, no more crying infants, muffled business, or coffee spills—nothing more was heard; nothing else was seen or smelt or touched. It was just a suspended moment now. Her and him. Them. _This_. It was just their slipping, sliding, perfectly mismatched, fingertips skating into position for the first time to graze skin, timidly; tenderly; and seeming to electrify them both in tandem like a cosmic click. 

“You infuriate me _most_ , I mean. Like—” Caroline stalled to run her tongue over her lower lip, probably knowing she should push back and let go of his hand…but she didn’t; she couldn’t, “Like, more than anything.”

“I know. You needn’t explain,” Klaus conceded, the words rolling out of his mouth in one hoarse breath. 

Inhaling, he let her scent percolate. He roamed her features, relished the feel of her silky vanilla hand beneath his because it was warmer than he’d imagined—all the way through tendon and bone—and it made his heart gallop until all the sense he had left buried itself beneath a shallow grave to rest. No longer sleeping like it had been in the months since they first met, but killed into restlessness. It was a fate worse than death. 

“Right. Good,” Caroline clipped at last, her gaze narrowed on their still-bumping fingers; her breathing erratic and disturbed, her cheeks reddening because she knew damn-well she never denied it. No, she never denied being intrigued by him…liking him…wondering, wishing, wanting… _something_ … _anything._

The rebuttal never once left her mouth, never once breached her lips to smash against his ears like cymbals. It dissolved. Faded into silence. Or, more unbelievable than not, perhaps it was never there.

“Just so…just so we’re clear then,” she said, disguising a shudder with a whip of her hair over her shoulder.

“Of course.” Klaus’ eyes were steady, penetrating: warmer than honey. More gold. “Always.”

A knock sounded on the window then, interrupting them. Breaking the moment and the tension like a snipped-in-half _pling_. 

Turning, Caroline drew back from him to throw her hands over her mouth and squeak in a mixture of surprise and horror; Klaus crumbled a napkin in his fist and snarled, his mind swirling with fury, shock, and confusion. They were frozen. Stunted. In a matter of seconds, they became two vampire statues cemented to their wooden chairs, gaping and blinking in an effort to regain some semblance of composure—grappling to understand _what in bloody hell_ this meant—and trying to ascertain if it was some kind of trick, or if it was a witch-brewed dream. After all, was not the world full of monsters with bloodstained vendettas who either already were, or could become, their enemies? 

Regardless, the last thing they expected was exposure. Like this. By a man such as _him_.

_Silas_.

Never once did Klaus take his eyes off the impostor who stood before them in the middle of the sidewalk dressed in his favorite Henley, wearing his smug smirk, and waving his private and in-progress portrait of Caroline at them both like a jibe. Or like a hint of some kind. What kind of warped and sadistic mental attack was this? From where did he conjure the nerve? Why, and for what goddamn reason, would he dare to believe Klaus wouldn’t hunt him down and slaughter him into ribbons for this?

Laughing as if he’d heard a punchline with a meaning only he grasped, Silas flipped over the canvas and pressed it against the window where it stuck almost as if it were suction-cupped. He took off without waiting for their reaction. Or, more likely than anything, he left before he could face retribution and painful, neck-snapping, heart-squashing retaliation. 

In the end, all that remained of him was this message written for Klaus and Caroline in black paint:

 

_The Allure is what brought you here_

_The Allure is what connects you, what makes you the same_

_The Allure is here to stay_

_Stop fighting. Surrender. It won’t go away._

 

_—And neither will I_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, y'all.


End file.
